


Idunn and Her Apples

by DaemonMeg



Series: True Lies [2]
Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Shapeshifter Loki, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 02:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaemonMeg/pseuds/DaemonMeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mission goes wrong and Loki and Verity are taken captive.  He tells her a story while they try to keep warm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idunn and Her Apples

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie). All mistakes are my own.

She couldn’t keep her body from shuddering. Rubbing her hands up and down her arms did nothing to warm her, and if anything, the friction was causing her skin to chafe. She did her best not to lean against the freezer wall, knowing the metal would feel even colder than the air around her. Occasionally, a sheet of plastic would swing to the side, giving her a glimpse of Loki as he prowled the far side near the door looking for an emergency latch.

“This is entirely your fault.” Verity heard the lie in her own words, but she didn’t care. “You said this was a simple mission. All I had to do was sit in the van, eavesdrop, and talk in your earpiece.”

“Verity, I’m sorry. I’m a master at illusion. I don’t possess prescience and honestly didn’t see this outcome.”

She just glared at him through the fogged lenses of her glasses. Damn him and his comfy looking hooded sweatshirt. She huddled forward and pulled her arms inside her shirt, sticking her hands under her armpits. She really needed to start wearing more sensible clothes for these missions of his. Skinny jeans and a Henley might look cute on the street, but did absolutely nothing for her locked in this mad scientist’s specimen freezer.

He moved across the room then and squatted in front of her. He pulled the sweatshirt over his head in a swift move and offered it to her. “May I?”

“Oh God, yes!” she answered with chattering teeth and immediately pounced on the peace offering in his hands. “So, plan B?”

He smiled. “Plan B. We wait.” He twisted from his squatting position and settled into place next to her on the floor. Loki wrapped one arm around her shoulder and rubbed it briskly. Verity found herself warming much more quickly with his added body heat.

“Won’t you be cold?”

“I’m never cold.”

_Liar_.

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Well, there was this one time…”

“Story time? Really?” Verity tried to groan, but her teeth kept clacking together and ruining the effect.

“Do you have a better idea on how to pass the time?” He grinned at her then and waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

She couldn’t help but laugh at that, but still she filed the suggestion away in her mind to contemplate another day. “Story time it is.” She leaned into Loki’s chest and listened to his chest rumble as he spun his tale.

“Long ago,” he began, “I had a much healthier relationship with Odin. I used to travel with him as he visited the nine realms. On one of our excursions, it chanced that a great eagle swooped from the sky and stole me away.”

“Swooping is bad,” she interrupted with a smirk. But Loki didn’t get the videogame reference and he talked right over her.

“The eagle flew me to another realm and deposited me on an iceberg in Jotunheim, leaving me to freeze and starve to death.” He held up a hand as she was about to ask a question. “The eagle was a shapeshifter and a giant with a grudge against me, Thiassi. He proposed a ransom: my freedom in exchange for the apples of Idunn.”

“What’s so special about her apples? Are they a metaphor or something?”

“The apples of Idunn grant those of Asgard with health and youth, allowing us to live for thousands of years without appearing to age. So you can see why Thiassi would want them to prolong his own miserable life. The issue, though, lay in the fact that only Idunn could pluck the apples from the tree and only Idunn could bestow the apples on another. For Thiassi to have an apple, he must have Idunn.”

“Is this why people say ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’?” Verity asked.

“No. Stop interrupting.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze as though he only meant it in jest. “I was young and reckless and agreed. But I swore upon Ygdrassil the World-Tree, and so bound myself to complete the task. Thiassi changed back into an eagle and flew me over the border back to Asgard. I lured Idunn from the garden with the tale that I had seen and smelled better apples than hers.”

She could feel him tilt his head down to look at her. “If only she’d had your power to see through lies.”

“If she did, this would make for a very short and boring story.”

“Yes, well. As soon as Idunn walked out her garden gate carrying her ever present basket of apples, Thiassi swept from the sky once more and grabbed her up with his talons. He stole her away and hid her in a cave. While she was gone, the gods of Asgard began to age without the benefits of Idunn’s apples. We grew bent and haggard, our shoulders stooped with age. Odin, afraid of wasting away, sent Hugin and Munin to discover what happened to Idunn. Those flying rats sat upon his shoulders and told him of my part in Idunn’s disappearance. He sent my brother to threaten me, and Thor almost expelled me from Asgard.”

“Wow, you _and_ your family are all really fucked up.” The more she learned of Loki, the more she appreciated her own family dynamics - or lack thereof.

“Indeed. My mother leant me her dress of feathers, and I changed form and flew to Jotunheim as a falcon. It didn’t take me long to find one of Thiassi’s daughters, Skadi was her name, and I allowed her to catch me and keep me as a pet. I waited until Skadi took me into Thiassi’s secret cave and I escaped her grasp and flew up among the stalactites where she could not catch me. Lucky for me, Skadi moved on to her next plaything. I called down to Idunn and she hid her basket of apples where the giant would not find them. I helped her change to the form of a sparrow and we flew back to Asgard.”

“And?” There had to be more to this story.

“And Thiassi discovered we had left, so he changed to his eagle form. The three of us sped through the skies towards the great wall that encircled Asgard. It was…exciting. It was like one of the performances you see at an air show. My fellows lit a magical fire on the top of the wall and Idunn and I slipped through between the flames but they barred Thiassi from entering. He beat his great wings against the flame, but the fires would not go out. His feathers became singed and he lost flight, tumbling to the ground just outside the wall of Asgard and dying, a broken thing half eagle and half giant. But Odin and Thor and the rest were happy to have Idunn and her apples back because they feared the cold dark of old age and death.”

_Magic apples. Giants. Falcons and eagles and sparrows fighting and wheeling in the air over a city of gods. This was so much better than reading books about cellular mitosis or differential equations._

Suddenly, they heard a clunk from outside their freezer.

“Shh,” he hushed her. Loki creaked to his feet and slid quietly over towards the steel door and listened. “I think they’re back.”

“Loki,” Verity whispered. “Can you change your shape right now? Can you change mine like you did for Idunn?”

He nodded but kept quiet.

“I think I have an idea.”

Ten minutes later, the scientist and his henchman cracked the steel door to the specimen freezer. They were braced with clubs and another stood behind with a gun at the ready. With a screech, a falcon flew down from the ceiling and out the door, talons extended at their faces. It battered at their heads with its wings as a smaller sparrow winged away down the corridor. At the sound of a chirp, the falcon wheeled off after its companion with a whirr of its powerful wings. The men climbed to their feet, soft feathers falling down around them.

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. He's not really into shapeshifting into little animals anymore as we saw in #5. But hey, this is fanfiction right? Plus, it matched the Norse myth. 
> 
> The myth is taken from "The Children of Odin: the book of northern myths" by Padraic Colum (1920), a public domain book.
> 
> Also-not really a romantic pairing..yet..so I tagged them as both.


End file.
